USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Farmington > Farmington papers > Part 5
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The Assembly's Catechism continued in use until 1846, when it was voted to use the "Catechisms of Religious Denominations among us."
The character of the teachers who were to give this religious instruction was carefully considered. By the rules of 1825, 1841, and 1846, each candidate must formally declare his belief in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures.
In 1825 Daboll's Arithmetic was formally introduced into the schools, having been in use for about ten years in the Farmington Academy. Probably it was the first text-book in Arithmetic ever used in our public schools.
In 1805, twenty years before, only " some useful arith- metical tables were ordered by the board of overseers." Pre- vious to the Revolution, Arithmetic was no more taught in the common schools than Differential Calculus is now. It was one of the higher studies considered of no use out- side of the counting-room. Slates and blackboards were unknown, and if the pedagogue could put a few columns of figures on paper for some youthful prodigy to foot, he was thought something uncommon, while to read his Bible in Latin and Greek was not an unusual accomplish- ment.
In 1796 the School Society ordered the introduction of " Webster's Institute in all its parts," and directed that the Bible should be read as the closing exercise of the afternoon. By Webster's Institute in all its parts was meant : Part First, the famous Spelling Book; Part Second, " A plain and comprehensive Grammar founded on the
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true principles and idioms of the language," which, how- ever, never came into general use; Part Third, “ An Amer- ican Selection of lessons in reading and speaking, calculated to improve the Minds and refine the Taste of Youth," etc., etc., more familiarly known simply as "The Third Part." Webster's Spelling Book held its place for seventy- eight years until it was voted out in 1874, and the school boy no longer reads of the Boy that stole Apples, or of the Milk-maid who prematurely counted her chickens, of Poor Tray, The Partial Judge, and all the other wholesome lessons in morality.
Webster's Third Part, coming after the war of Inde- pendence, was largely made up of the patriotic orations of Hancock, Warren, Ames, Livingston, and other Amer- ican orators, with the Fourth of July oration of Joel Bar- low at the North Church in Hartford. It would hardly be read with much enthusiasm by the boy of to-day, but at the beginning of the century every boy was taught to consider himself a possible President of the United States, and school declamations were thought a useful prep- aration for the future statesman.
The Columbian Orator was introduced in 1818, and Scott's Lessons in Elocution in 1825. Declamation led to dialogue, and soon the last half of the winter term was given up to preparation for the closing exhibition. More- over, the Hartford Theater had just been opened in 1795, and the Connecticut Courant in a long editorial had held it up as a worthy school of morals. The theater was to the Puritans the most alluring portal to the bottomless pit, and all that fostered a love of the drama must be crushed out. Gov. Treadwell, about the year 1800, says of the school visitors, "They have discontinued all at- tempts at public speaking in declamations, dialogues, and
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theatrical representations, as not suited to the years of the scholars, as calculated to foster pride, to raise them in their own view into men and women before their time, and like hot-beds to force a premature growth for ignorance and folly to stare at." In place of the proscribed exhibi- tions, there were introduced annual examinations of the first classes of all public schools of the town which took place in the meeting-house until the year 1818, when they began to be held in the "Union Hall," or upper room of the new Academy building. District vied with district in reading, spelling, and especially in saying the catechism, as they styled it. They were repeated annually until 1822. In 1841 an attempt was made to revive them, and they were held for five years. I remember attending one in the meeting-house, March 15, 1844, in which, with the ex- ception of a fine display by the West District School under the instruction of Mr. John N. Bartlett, now Superintend- ent of Schools in New Britain, the exercises were not es- pecially interesting.
In 1816 the Farmington Academy was opened with Mr. Epaphras Goodman as principal, who was succeeded in 1823 by Simeon Hart, Jr., long known and honored by the more familiar name of Deacon Hart. Deacon Hart, who dearly loved to make boys happy, revived in that in- stitution the old school exhibitions. An account of the en- tertainment concluding his first year in the Academy is preserved in the diary of a very lovely girl of sixteen. As this exhibition had some interesting peculiarities not now associated with dramatic performances, I give a few extracts. The exhibition took place November 13, 1823, in the meeting-house, where a part of the room was cur- tained off, and the curtains hung with festoons of roses by the young ladies of the school. She says: " The scholars
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met at the schoolroom and walked over in procession. We had two flutes which supplied us with music between the scenes. . . We had plenty of cake and wine behind the curtains and all was mirth and happiness. Our dialogue
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SOCIETY HOUSE, FARMINGTON ACADEMY Erected March 15, 1816
was the last - 'Not at Home.' - When that was through the scholars who had been engaged during the evening with speaking, formed a semi-circle on the stage and Mr. Porter stood in the center and made a prayer, which closed the exercises of the evening."
In 1826 another exhibition took place, but our youth- ful diarist was not among the number of the happy actors. For two years the grass had grown above her grave. Most of the actors were scholars from other towns, but a few have familiar names. One of the principal scenes was from the then very famous tragedy of Douglas, by John Home, a minister of the Kirk of Scotland. It was first represented in Edinburgh, when the delighted Scotchmen, wild with en-
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thusiasm, exclaimed with one accord "Where is Wully Shakespeare noo." In this scene, Edward L. Hart, after- wards a very successful and beloved teacher in this town, declaimed the words so familiar to the school-boy ears of our fathers :
"My name is Norval. On the Grampian Hills My father feeds his flocks, a frugal swain."
and Noah Porter, Jr., now the venerable ex-president of Yale, had the part of John, and later in the evening, acted the part of a Frenchman in a play called "The Will or the Power of Medicine." The next year N. Porter, Jr., Ralph Cowles, and Edward L. Hart recite a colloquy "On Improvements in Education," and Winthrop M. Wadsworth, then a youth of fourteen, acts the part of John Hickory in " The Country Boy," with Timothy Pit- kin, son of the Hon. Timothy Pitkin, as Hotspur. Elijah L. Lewis has the part of Philip in the play of " The Cur- few," in which N. Porter, Jr., is a robber disguised as a minstrel.
The example of the Academy boys and girls excited the emulation of the scholars in the district schools, who no longer had the fear of Gov. Treadwell and the school visitors of 1800 before their eyes. The favorite plays were those of a martial order, and happy was the boy who could wear a sword, and in grandiloquent language chal- lenge some other youth to deadly encounter.
I remember seeing the Combat in Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake enacted, James Fitz James appearing in the uniform of the Farmington Grenadier with its Roman helmet and towering white plume, while Roderick Dhu was arrayed in the red and blue uniform, or whatever it was, of the Bushwacker Company.
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Before closing the subject of schools, perhaps you will expect some mention of the Indian School in Farmington. In the year 1706 the General Assembly desired " the rev- erend ministers of the colony " to present to the next As- sembly a plan for promoting the conversion of the natives. In 1717 they resolve " that the business of gospelizing the Indians be referred to the sessions of the Assembly in October next." The result, after a long delay, seems to have been the establishment of the somewhat famous In- dian school at Mohegan, and of another at Farmington. In October, 1733, "On a report made by the Reverend Mr. Samuel Whitman of Farmington relating to the In- dians in said town; This Assembly do appoint Capt. Wil- liam Wadsworth and Capt. Josiah Hart of said Farming- ton, to provide for the dieting of the Indian youth at four shillings per week for the time they attend the school in said town." On the 27th of May, 1734, the Rev. Sam- ual Whitman writes to Gov. Talcott, " May it please your Honour. I understand that ye Act of Assembly relating to ye boarding out of Indian children in order to their being schooled is expired, and having a few moments to turn my thoughts on that affair, hope that ye defects in what is here brokenly offered will be overlooked. I have leisure only to inform your Honour that of the nine In- dian lads that were kept at school last winter, 3 can read well in a testament, 3 currently in a psalter, and 3 are in their primers. Testaments & psalters have been provided for those that read in them, 3 of ye Indian lads are en- tered in writing and one begins to write a legible hand. I thank the Assembly on their behalf for their care of ym & past bounty to them and pray that that Act of Assembly be revived and continued, not at all doubting but ye pious care of ye government for ye education of ye Indians is
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pleasing to heaven, and may be of advantage to some of them so yt they may be saved by coming to the knowledge of the truth. I ha'nt time to enlarge but
remain your Honour's humble and Obedient Servant
Sam" Whitman."
An itemized account was rendered of the amounts paid to Deacon Timothy Porter and seven others named for the board of these boys. Appropriations for the school were made by the Assembly for three successive years. - In the next year, 1736, instead of the annual appropria- tion, the General Assembly ordered a contribution for civil- izing and christianizing of the Indian natives to be taken " at the next public Thanksgiving."
The contribution was duly taken, but, whether from the peculiar regard felt for the Indian or from other causes, it consisted so largely of uncurrent money that the General Assembly at its next session appointed a committee "to receive the contribution money for gospelizing the Indians and exchange the torn bills with the Treasurer."
But let us not forget the schoolmasters of the olden line. The records rarely name them. They give, with labored precision, year after year, long lists of committees, treasurers, collectors and what not, but the schoolmaster, the center and life of the whole system, and the only man we much care to know about, is rarely mentioned. Mr. James is the first master named. This was the Rev. John James, who came from England, where he had been under the instruction of a Mr. Veal, a dissenting minister. We first hear of him in January, 1683, when a committee from Haddam was chosen " to go to New London and speak with Mr. John James in reference to securing him to be our minister." In May, 1684, the town of Farmington " agreed that the town would give twenty-five pounds as
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a town by the year for the encouragement of Mr. James to teach school and so proportionately so long as the town and he shall agree." In December of the same year they chose a committee " to treat and agree with Mr. James for to teach school for one year after his year agreed for is up." In December, 1686, the town of Haddam made another and probably successful attempt to secure his services, and voted "that if Mr. James stand in need of a house to live in, he shall have Mr. Noyes's house and orchard and pasture for one year."
Seven years afterwards he began to preach in Derby, where he soon became preacher, schoolmaster, and town clerk. In 1706 he was sick and disabled and removed to Wethersfield, where he died August 9, 1729, aged about 72.
Dr. Stiles, visiting the Prince Library in Boston in 1770, made some memoranda from a letter of Rev. Stephen Mix of Wethersfield, dated September 22, 1729. " He came from England, I should think, 40 years since. De- voted to Books. Was some time Pastor of the church in Derby. Some years before his death he removed hither, living a private life. Delivery very ungraceful. Died a good man." Dr. David Dudley Field, in his " Statistical Account of the Town of Haddam," says, " Some ludicrous anecdotes are transmitted respecting him and are now widely circulated in the country;" but Dr. Field and most of the good people living in Haddam in 1819 are dead, and the aforesaid anecdotes do not seem to have survived them. The Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall, writing to John Winthrop of an attack on New London by French pri- vateers on the morning of July 17, 1690, alludes to a Mr. James, who was without much doubt our early school- master. He writes, "my wife & family was posted at your Hon's a considerable while, it being thought to be
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ye most convenient place for the feminine rendevouz. Mr. James (who commands in cheife among them) upon ye coast alarme given, faceth to ye mill, gathers like a snow- ball as he goes, make a generall muster at your Hon's, and so posts away with the greatest speed, to take ye advantage of ye neighbouring rocky hills, craggy inaccessible moun- taines; so that we ever els is lost, Mr. James & ye women are safe."
In 1705 " the town by vote declared it to be their minds that Mr. Luke Hayes shall not be further employed in teaching of school." This vote implies that he had pre- viously taught, and the title Mr. at that day cannot very well be construed to mean other than Reverend. Two . years afterward they vote that Mr. Luke Hayes shall not be further employed in teaching of school. Luke had married Elizabeth, daughter of Deacon John Langdon, deceased, and lived in the leanto of his house, which stood near the present site of the South District schoolhouse. Elizabeth died in 1703, and Luke married Maudlin, whose maiden name was probably Daniels. She was a much- marrying woman, having had at least four husbands of various nationalities and colors. First she married Sam- uel, son of Rev. Samuel Street of Wallingford; next, in 1696, she married Frank Freeman of Farmington, a negro, a man of property, and an office-holder duly elected by the town. He died in a few months, and she married next Luke Hayes, who followed his predecessors in 1712; and in a little more than three years afterwards the records inform us that Maudlin Hayes, widow, on the third of May, 1716, married Dennis Hoogins of Ireland. Seven years later Maudlin is again a widow. Luke's library is inventoried as consisting of one Latin book, which, with other items, was inventoried at eighteen pence, not one-
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fourth of what the library of his predecessor, Frank Free- man, was valued.
From the close of the administration of Luke Hayes ten years elapse before the name of any succeeding master is recorded. On the 8th of January, 1717-8, the Eccle- siastical Society voted to pay William Lewis, schoolmaster, for teaching school the year past. It is extremely im- probable that this was his first year's service, for he was now sixty years old. He was one of the sixteen children of Capt. William Lewis, a son of William Lewis, the im- migrant, who arrived in Boston in the ship Lion on Sun- day, September 16th, 1632. That William Lewis became a schoolmaster is not far to seek. His father married for his second wife Mary, daughter of Ezekiel Cheever, the famous school teacher of New England, who taught school for seventy years at New Haven, Ipswich, Charlestown, and Boston successively. Ezekiel, a younger brother of William, preached occasionally in Farmington in 1698 after the death of Rev. Samuel Hooker, but afterwards became an assistant teacher in the Latin School of his grandfather, Ezekiel Cheever, in Boston.
Schoolmaster William lived in a house which stood on or very near the site of the Elm-Tree Inn, and was one of the seven houses which the town, on the 31st day of March, 1704, ordered to be fortified and supplied with powder, lead bullets, flints and half-pikes. This was during the French and Indian War. Not only did Master Wil- liam Lewis teach school, but the Society appointed him collector to collect of the parents of his scholars their share of the rate bill and the wood tax. For this service he was to receive " five shillings as a reward for his trouble "; but let no one presume to envy him his reward. The effigy of Queen Anne or of George the First on the
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coin of the realm was a rare sight to the farmer of 1717. Year by year the town voted how taxes should be paid, and this year ordered payment in wheat at five shillings per bushel, rye at three shillings, and Indian corn at two shillings and eight pence. The office of collector was no sinecure.
It was many years before we learn the name of any succeeding master. The olden time was gone and the modern teachers are well known; nevertheless, I cannot well constrain myself from paying a brief tribute to the memory of the noblest of them all, Deacon Simeon Hart, the teacher of my boyhood. He was a member of this society, admitted in 1840, and a frequent donor to its collections. No minute account of his life is needed. To some of you his face and voice and person were a familiar benediction. Others can read of him on the printed page. I shall confine myself to a very few personal recollections. Most prominent in the character of Deacon Hart was his profound but unaffected piety. Next to his religious life, and growing out of it, through love of his fellow men, appeared his wonderful public spirit. He was no originator of brilliant schemes which ended in failure and the setting by the ears of all participants. Whatever he undertook, his remarkable practical good sense was sure to carry through, and when all was done, he invariably paid much more than his share of the expense. By his foresight and generosity was built the Farmington Female Seminary build- ing with its wide-reaching consequences. He was the first treasurer of the Farmington Savings Bank and its prin- cipal founder. Perhaps his next most conspicuous char- acteristic was his love of farming. I remember hearing him deliver the annual address before the Hartford County Agricultural Society in October, 1849. The Department
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of Philosophy and the Arts, providing instruction in Ag- ricultural Chemistry, had just been established in Yale Col- lege, and Professor John Pitkin Norton, with all the energy and zeal of his enthusiastic nature, was lecturing all over the country about the new science. The notion somehow was prevalent that the farmer had only to send a few pounds of soil from his farm to New Haven for analysis, and then, putting this alongside of the known analysis of the different grains, could at once know how to doctor his farm and pour untold wealth into his granaries. The object of Deacon Hart's address was to explain what the new science really proposed. It was as successful as most attempts to popularize science. He had much to say also of what seemed to him the delightful life of the farmer, his independence, his long winter evenings for social and intellectual enjoyments, and the firm and vigorous health which crowned his labors. As a schoolmaster, he could not well refrain from closing his address with an extract from the Georgics of Virgil, about the fortunate husband- men needing no lofty palaces, or gold embroidered gar- ments, or delicate perfumes, but happy in quiet security, honest lives, and abundant riches. Anyone who ever at- tended school in the front basement room of his house will doubtless remember the " Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry," edited by Prof. Norton. Other studies were somewhat optional, but that book every boy had to study. None were excused, whether intending to be farmers or merchants or professional men. It made no difference. That book they had to learn. Mr. Hart had a fondness for scientific studies, and many were the brilliant experi- ments he showed us in that old basement room. His ex- periments were always successful. He did not say : " Young men, we will mix these two colorless fluids and the result
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will be a brilliant blue," and then have it turn out red. If he said blue, blue it was. His profound religious beliefs · and his scientific knowledge did not conflict. The time for plans to harmonize religion and science annually brought out and then laid aside had not come. I remember on one of those glorious rides to the Tower, which he gave the boys, we noticed a huge rock split from top to bottom, and when the boys asked how it came in that condition, the Deacon, doubtless having in mind a recent Sunday- school lesson, replied that it might have occurred at the time of the crucifixion, when the earth did quake and the rocks were rent; which was not bad science for the year of grace 1846.
Such, so far as I have been able to describe them, were the schools and schoolmasters of Farmington in the Olden Time. We, in these modern days, have increased the cost of schools many fold. We have introduced studies, the very names of which were unknown to our ancestors. We teach wonders in science which they would speedily have set down to dealings with " that old deluder Sathan." The funds which their pious care provided, our towns and cities have in many cases used in payment of their debts, and issued bonds for their children to pay. We have broadened our theology, extended our intellectual horizon, put all manner of learning within easy reach of all, but let us not forget that the men and women who went forth from the old log schoolhouse to found and preserve our free institutions and make our modern scholarship possible, have earned our profoundest gratitude, and are worthy of eternal honor.
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AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS DELIVERED AT
THE ANNUAL MEETING
of the
VILLAGE LIBRARY COMPANY
OF FARMINGTON, CONNECTICUT
May 3, 1893
by Julius Gay
FARMINGTON IN THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION
delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Village Library Company of Farmington May 3, 1893
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Village Library Company of Farmington:
I propose this evening to answer, in a somewhat in- formal way, certain questions often asked about Farming- ton in the days of the Revolution. I shall have little to say of battles and campaigns, and great generals. A glimpse, and only a glimpse, we may have of Washington as he rides into the forest toward Litchfield, soon to learn of the treachery of Arnold. All these weightier matters every schoolboy knows, or ought to know. My subject lies nearer home, of little interest but to those whose grandsires here lived, and from this valley went out to preserve its liberties.
The visitor to the old cemetery, after passing through the gateway with its grim inscription, " Memento Mori," and climbing the steep pathway beyond, soon finds on his left a stone with this inscription: "In Memory of | Mr. Matthias Leaming. | Who hars got | Beyond the reach of Parcecushion. | The life of man is Vanity." There is no date of death or record of age. It is not so much the
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memorial of an individual as of a lost cause. Its position, facing in opposition to all the other stones, is itself a pro- test. Matthias Leaming was a Tory, or, as he preferred to be called, a Loyalist. At the close of the war the Tories mostly fled to England, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada, and in 1790 were allowed fifteen and one-half millions of dollars by the Crown, besides annuities, offices, and other gifts, in recompense for their services and suffer- ings. So few remained here that we hardly realize that once, taking New England as a whole, they were as numer- ous and wealthy as the patriot party. We have no time to consider at length the causes of the war, but certain things we must bear in mind if we would at all understand the
spirit of the times. The orators had much to say of taxa- tion without representation, and stout Dr. Johnson replied in vigorous English that taxation was no tyranny. Other matters, however, less abstract, had gradually prepared the patriots to resist to the death this last imposition. The colonists were denied the right to manufacture for them- selves almost all articles of necessity, but must import them from some Englishman whose sovereign had given him the monopoly. Their commerce was restricted to British ports. Even the agricultural products of the neighboring West Indies must first be shipped to England before they could be landed in Boston. They were denied a market either for sale or purchase outside of the dominion of Great Britain. The British merchant could say, " You shall trade at my shop or starve, and you shall make nothing for your- selves." Their solemn charters were annulled, authority to elect their principal officers was denied them, and the right to assemble in town meeting abolished. Repeatedly his Majesty asked, in a long list of questions submitted to the General Assembly of Connecticut, where his dutiful sub-
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